Monday, March 31, 2008

Boondoggle



From Wikipedia:
Scoubidou (Gimp, Scoubi, Scoobie, Boondoggle, or Lanyard) is a plaiting and knotting craft, originally aimed at children, which originated in France, where it became a fad in the late 1950s. The name Scoubidou came from the late French singer Sacha Distel, who scored his first hit with the song of the same name in 1958. It came back into fashion in various countries, including the United Kingdom, in 2004 and 2005. It uses commercially supplied plastic strips or tubes.


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Caipirinha

Caipirinha

from wikipedia:

Caipirinha (pronounced [kaj.pi.'ɾĩ.jɐ]) is Brazil's national cocktail, made with cachaça (pronounced IPA: [ˌkaˈʃasɐ]), sugar and lime. Cachaça is Brazil's most common distilled alcoholic beverage. Like rum, it is made from sugarcane. Cachaça is made from sugarcane alcohol, obtained from the fermentation of sugarcane juice which is afterwards distilled. Caipiroska, a common variant of the drink, uses vodka in place of cachaça. A Caipirissima substitutes rum for the cachaça.


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MP3 file of pronunciation

Bar Jack!

Bar Jack

from wikipedia:

Carangoides ruber, or the bar jack is an ocean-dwelling fish commonly found in the central Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean. It is a fairly popular sport fish and can be caught on light tackle. However, most recorded ciguatera cases on the island of St. Thomas can be traced to this single species.


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Monday, March 24, 2008

Water wheel

Anderson Mill

from wikipedia:

A water wheel is a means of extracting power from the flow (or fall) of water, that is hydropower. Water wheels were widely used in the Middle Ages to power industry in Europe. The alternatives were the windmill and human and animal power. The most common use of the water wheel was to mill flour in gristmills, but other uses included foundry work and machining, and pounding linen for use in paper.


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Sunday, March 23, 2008

Happy Easter!

Easter Bunny

from wikipedia:

Easter, also called Pascha, is the most important religious feast in the Christian liturgical year. It is believed by the Christians to be the resurrection of Jesus, which Christians believe occurred on the third day after his crucifixion around AD 33. Easter also marks the end of Lent, a season of prayer and penance. Many non-religious cultural elements have become part of the holiday, and those aspects are often celebrated by many Christians and non-Christians.


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Friday, March 21, 2008

Lincoln Electric

from wikipedia:

Lincoln Electric (NASDAQ: LECO) is a company in Cleveland, Ohio, United States that manufactures arc welding equipment. They are a worldwide leader in production of welding equipment and have subsidiary companies around the globe. It was founded in 1895 by John C. Lincoln with a capital investment of $200 to make electric motors he had designed. In 2007, Lincoln Electric Holdings is listed as 866 among the Fortune 1000.


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Antikythera mechanism

Antikythera mechanism - main fragment

from wikipedia:

The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient mechanical calculator (also described as the first "mechanical computer") designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was discovered in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, in 1900. Subsequent investigation, particularly in 2006, dated it to about 150-100 BC, and hypothesised that it was on board a ship that sank en route from the Greek island of Rhodes to Rome, perhaps as part of an official loot. Technological artifacts of similar complexity did not appear until a thousand years later.


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Thursday, March 20, 2008

You blockhead!

from wikipedia:

In HTML and XHTML, the blockquote element defines a block quotation within the text. The syntax is <blockquote>blockquoted text goes here</blockquote>.

The blockquote element is used to indicate the quotation of a large section of text from another source. Using the default HTML styling of most web browsers, it will indent the right and left margins both on the display and in printed form.


The excerpt above uses the blackquote tag and is an example of how it can be styled.

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St. Urho's Day

from wikipedia:

The legend of St. Urho was the invention of a Finnish-American named Richard Mattson, who worked at Ketola's Department Store in Virginia, Minnesota in spring of 1956. Mattson later recounted that he invented St. Urho when he was questioned by coworker Gene McCavic about the Finns' lack of a saint like the Irish St. Patrick, whose feat of casting the snakes out of Ireland is remembered on St. Patrick's Day.

According to the original "Ode to St. Urho" written by Gene McCavic and Richard Mattson, St. Urho was supposed to have cast "tose 'Rogs" (those frogs) out of Finland by the power of his loud voice, which he obtained by drinking "feelia sour" (sour whole milk) and eating "kala mojakka" (fish soup).

The original "Ode to St. Urho" identified St. Urho's Day as taking place on May 24. Later the date was changed to March 16, the day before St. Patrick's Day. St. Urho's feast is supposed to be celebrated by wearing the colors Royal Purple and Nile Green. Other details of the invented legend also changed, apparently under the influence of Dr. Sulo Havumäki, a psychology professor at Bemidji State College in Bemidji, Minnesota. The legend now states that St. Urho drove away grasshoppers (rather than frogs) from Finland using the incantation "Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen!" ("Grasshopper, grasshopper, go from hence to Hell!"), thus saving the Finnish grape crops.


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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Arthur C. Clarke passes away

Arthur C. Clarke

from wikipedia:

Arthur Charles Clarke (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008) was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, most famous for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, and for collaborating with director Stanley Kubrick on the film of the same name.

Clarke died in Sri Lanka on 19 March 2008 after suffering from breathing problems, according to Rohan de Silva, one of his aides.


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Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu




Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu
is the Māori name for a hill, 305 metres high, close to Porangahau, south of Waipukurau in southern Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. (more...)

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Snow Trac

Snow Trac

from wikipedia:

The Snow Trac is a small personal Snowcat that is roughly the size of a modern compact car.

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Monday, March 17, 2008

Save Polaroid!

from wikipedia:

Instant film is a photographic film that is designed to be used in an instant camera (and, with accessory hardware, with many professional film cameras). The film pack contains the chemicals needed for developing, and the instant camera automatically initiates the developing process after a photograph has been taken. In most types of Polaroid instant cameras, the film is pulled out through rollers which break open a pod containing the chemicals. The chemicals spread out over the surface of the film, and the positive image appears a few seconds to minutes later. The chemicals have time delays built into them so that each layer of the film can be processed in the correct order.

...In February 2008, Polaroid announced it would cease production of all instant film; the company will shut down three factories and lay off 450 workers.


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savepolaroid.com

Parmigiano-Reggiano









Parmigiano-Reggiano is a hard, fat granular cheese, cooked but not pressed, named after the producing areas of Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Bologna, in Emilia-Romagna, and Mantova, in Lombardy, Italy.

Parmigiano is simply the Italian adjective for Parma; the French version, Parmesan, is used in English. The term Parmesan is also loosely used as a common term for cheeses imitating true Parmesan cheese, especially outside Europe; within Europe, the Parmesan name is classified as a protected designation of origin. (more...)

Friday, March 14, 2008

HyperCard

from wikipedia:

HyperCard was an application program from Apple Inc. (at the time Apple Computer, Inc.) that was among the first successful hypermedia systems before the World Wide Web. It combined database capabilities with a graphical, flexible, user-modifiable approach. It also included HyperTalk, a powerful and relatively easy to learn programming language, to manipulate data and the user interface. HyperCard users often used it as a programming system for Rapid Application Development of different kinds of applications, database and otherwise.

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Happy Birthday, Quincy!

from wikipedia:

Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. (born March 14, 1933) is an American music impresario, conductor, record producer, musical arranger, Academy Award-winning film composer and trumpeter. During five decades in the entertainment industry, Jones has earned 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend Award in 1991.

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Thursday, March 13, 2008

Go Banana!

from wikipedia:

Banana republic is a pejorative term for a small, often Latin American, Caribbean or African country that is politically unstable, dependent on limited agriculture, and ruled by a small, self-elected, wealthy and corrupt clique. In most cases they have kept the government structures that were modeled after the colonial Spanish ruling clique, with a small, largely leisure class on the top and a large, poorly educated and poorly paid working class of peons. The term was coined by O. Henry, an American humorist and short story writer, in reference to Honduras. "Republic" in his time was often a euphemism for a dictatorship, while "banana" implied an easy reliance on basic agriculture and backwardness in the development of modern industrial technology.

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Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Pigpen cipher



from wikipedia:

The pigpen cipher (sometimes called the masonic cipher or Freemason's cipher) is a simple substitution cipher exchanging letters for symbols based on a grid. The use of symbols is no impediment to cryptanalysis however, and cryptanalysis is identical to that of other simple substitution schemes. The example key shows one way the letters can be assigned to the grid.

The scheme was used so often by the Freemasons that it is often called the Freemason's cipher. They began using it in the early 1700s to keep their records private and for correspondence (Kahn, 1967, p.~772; Newton, 1998, p. 113). Due to the simplicity of the cipher, it is still used by schoolchildren today.


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Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Hat's Off



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_500_Hats_of_Bartholomew_Cubbins

The Twisted World of Marge Simpson

from wikipedia:

"The Twisted World of Marge Simpson" is the eleventh episode of the The Simpsons' eighth season, which originally aired January 19, 1997. It was written by Jennifer Crittenden and directed by Chuck Sheetz. The episode guest stars Jack Lemmon as Frank Ormand and Joe Mantegna as Fat Tony. Over the course of the episode, Marge sets up her own business, selling pretzels.

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Monday, March 10, 2008

Pioneer plaque



from wikipedia:

The Pioneer plaques are a pair of gold anodized aluminum plaques which were placed on board the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft, featuring a pictorial message from humanity, in case either Pioneer 10 or 11 are intercepted by extraterrestrial beings. The plaques show the nude figures of a human male and female along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft.

The Pioneer spacecraft were the first human-built objects to leave the solar system. The plaque is attached to the antenna support struts in a position that shields it from erosion by stellar dust.

The Voyager Golden Record, a much more complex and detailed message using (then) state-of-the-art media, was attached to the Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977.


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Folly

from wikipedia:



In architecture, a folly is a building constructed strictly as a decoration, having none of the usual purposes of housing or sheltering associated with a conventional structure. They originated as decorative accents in parks and estates. "Folly" is used in the sense of fun or light-heartedness, not in the sense of something ill-advised.

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Dimples of Venus


























The phrase dimples of Venus refers to the pair of sagittally symmetrical indentations sometimes visible on the human lower back, just superior to the gluteal cleft. (more...)

Chair Mania!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chairs

Friday, March 7, 2008

Parallax scrolling



from wikipedia:

Parallax scrolling is a special scrolling technique in computer graphics. In this pseudo-3D technique, background images move by the "camera" slower than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth in a 2D video game and adding to the immersion. The technique grew out of the multiplane camera technique used in traditional animation since the 1940s.

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53rd and 6th















53rd and 6th or Chicken and Rice is a popular halal gyros stand on the corner of 53rd street and 6th avenue in New York City. (more...)

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Guayabera



from wikipedia:

The guayabera is a men's shirt popular in Latin America, the Caribbean, southeast Asia, and the West Indies.

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Tuesday, March 4, 2008

The Chewbacca defense

from wikipedia:

The Chewbacca defense is a fictional legal strategy used in the South Park episode 27 "Chef Aid", which premiered on October 7, 1998 as the fourteenth episode of the second season. The aim of the argument is to confuse the jury. The concept satirized attorney Johnnie Cochran's closing argument defending O. J. Simpson in his murder trial.

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Principality of Sealand













The Principality of Sealand is a micronation located on HM Fort Roughs, a former World War II Maunsell Sea Fort in the North Sea 10 km (six miles) off the coast of Suffolk, England, United Kingdom.

Since 1967, the facility has been occupied by former radio broadcaster and British Army Major Paddy Roy Bates, his associates and family, who claim that it is an independent sovereign state.[2] External commentators generally classify Sealand as a micronation.[3][4][5] It has been described as the world's best-known micronation.[6]

Sealand is not recognized as a sovereign state by any United Nations member, and critics, citing court rulings in the United States and in Germany, have asserted that Roughs Tower has always remained under the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom. (more...)

How unlikely is your existence?

from wikipedia:

In astronomy a habitable zone (HZ) is a region of space where conditions are favorable for life as it may be found on Earth. There are two regions that must be favorable, one within a planetary system and the other within the galaxy. Planets and moons in these regions are the likeliest candidates to be habitable and thus capable of bearing extraterrestrial life similar to our own. Astronomers believe that life is most likely to form within the circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ) within a solar system, and the galactic habitable zone (GHZ) of the larger galaxy (though research on the latter point remains nascent). The HZ may also be referred to as the "life zone", "Green Belt" or the "Goldilocks Zone" (because it's neither too hot nor too cold, but "just right"). In our own solar system, the HZ is thought to extend from a distance of 0.95 to 1.37 astronomical units.

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Chew on this!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum_ban_in_Singapore

Monday, March 3, 2008

The Defenestrations of Prague

from wikipedia:

The Defenestrations of Prague

The Defenestrations of Prague can refer to either of two incidents in the history of Bohemia. The first occurred in 1419 and the second in 1618, although the term "Defenestration of Prague" is more commonly used to refer to the second incident. Both helped to trigger prolonged conflict within Bohemia and beyond. Defenestration is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window.

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Sunday, March 2, 2008

da Vinci's Tank Hauled Ass

da Vinci's Tank

If you look at his drawing, there are speed lines and a lot of dust being kicked up.

More images from da Vinci...

da Vinci in wikipedia...

Saturday, March 1, 2008

My Friend, The Giant Ground Sloth



from wikipedia:

Megatherium ("Great Beast") was a genus of elephant-sized ground sloths that lived from 2 million to 8,000 years ago. A related genus was Nothrotheriops, which were primarily bear-sized ground sloths. The rhinoceros-sized Promegatherium is suggested to be the ancestor of Megatherium.

More info...